Please don't feel discouraged. You just need some customers who know pizza to tell you how great yours is. Do you advertise in upscale areas? It might be worth the effort to invite a column writer or a popular blogger from those areas to try your pizza.

Brian,

Thanks for the encouraging words. My customers do say they like my pizzas and say they didnít taste anything like them around my area, but I know I can do better.

I really donít have a lot of money to advertise for a one day market, although I have made up signs for the 9 bulletin boards at market. Your idea to invite a column writer might be good, but since I am such a small pizza business I donít think they would really be interested. I donít think we have any pizza blogger in my area either. Thanks also for that idea.

Thanks for all your input everyone.I'm going to do some experimenting with preferments just for fun but I thing the process that could end up working for me would be to make dough in the morning, we usually do this around 10, do a bulk rise in the walk-in till the dinner rush is dying down (around 8:30), ball and then back in the walk-in till morning.

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scott123

John, that sounds pretty sensible, and should give you the best of both worlds, but, as I said before, one of these times, instead of a 10.5 hour bulk, don't be afraid to make the dough the day before (at 10:00) and go with a 34.5 hour bulk and an overnight ball. That could be pushing it a bit, but I think you might appreciate the flavor you'll achieve. Just make sure to dial back the yeast accordingly so that the dough about doubles by the time it's time for balling.

After thinking some more about what you propose to do, it sounds like what you propose to do with respect to the bulk rise and division of the bulk dough is essentially the method described by member wa dave at the PMQ Think Tank at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=73312#p73312, which I referenced earlier. Some time ago, Norma and I played around with the numbers that wa dave used to make an earlier version of his dough (http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11475.msg104846.html#msg104846) and concluded that his total formula hydration (that took into account the nominal hydration and the water content of the sour dough mix, the milk and the eggs) was around 53%. I suspect that in your case you are using a higher hydration value, which I think should be a plus.

I know everything is about marketing. I just donít know how receptive anyone would be about writing about such a small pizza stand. To state maybe my pizzas might be the best in the area, might be a stretch of the truth.